i just released my first game. It's an arena-shoot em' up much like geometry wars but with actual shooting enemies and it makes a lot of use of the libgdx particle system.I created a more simple version of the game for ludum dare #27 and decided to add some more features (e.g. a basic custom leaderboard and achievement-system which i can use in my future games as well) and release it to the play store.(which is also the october ludum dare challenge )

Trick for forum members: if you like the game and want to unlock everything for free (and disable ads) just go in options -> credits screen and touch down ~10 seconds.

Whew, that was hard! I'm a lot better at the pacifism-mode, luckily. At least compared to the other players on the highscore.

The hiscores are very nice, and they definitely add to the game! Without them, I would probably not play twice, but they add a lot of competition - which is fun. A nice touch is the tiny flags. Great! Now I feel really about beating someone, because they're from Sweden or America. A small improvement to this could be to allow scrolling on the highscore, so we can view more than just 10 entries. Maybe 50, or 100?

The graphics of the UI are a little disappointing. It doesn't feel well polished. When I die, there's no clear way for me to return to the main menu, for instance. I can press "back" on android, and the menu comes up, but this menu seems weird and half. Why is there more space between the last two buttons, than there are buttons on the entire menu? The "back"-menu then overlaps the gameover-screen. This seems odd. For the gameover-screen, I think you should have split the entire screen in the middle. Highscores go on one side, and scores as well as buttons (including the "back"-menu (this is really just an achievements-button, and a main menu one)) go on the left. Currently, it looks crammed together, and the highscore just looks malplaced.

Did you implement parts of the UI yourself? The achievements-screen jumps back instantly when I release my finger after scrolling "too far"- the LibGDX scrollpane would animate it sliding back, neatly. Why did you not use that?

The loading bar in the beginning was nice. I noticed that it doesn't quite fill out before the game starts. This is just nitpicking though. Maybe it's just my device.

The options menu is a little weird and disorganized. Most of the rectangle shapes in your UI has cut corners, which is cool. However, the rectangle around the "Options" in the top is square. Why even put a rectangle around it? It's a title, right?

Also, why is the font not consistent? The button-sizes are also not completely consistent, and this feels weird as well.

Why is there particles upon touch on all the menus, except for the main screen? Why leave it out for that?

Why is there an exit button? I take it most users just press home. Most applications don't have a way to exit them other than that.

The last thing I can possibly complain about is that the icons don't really match the rest of the game.

Gah, I'm probably not being fair to you by pointing out all the details. I do honestly think this is a nice game, and I'm only saying these things so you can make it even better. I hope you can appriciate this, and not hate me.

The graphics of the UI are a little disappointing. It doesn't feel well polished. When I die, there's no clear way for me to return to the main menu, for instance. I can press "back" on android, and the menu comes up, but this menu seems weird and half. Why is there more space between the last two buttons, than there are buttons on the entire menu? The "back"-menu then overlaps the gameover-screen. This seems odd. For the gameover-screen, I think you should have split the entire screen in the middle. Highscores go on one side, and scores as well as buttons (including the "back"-menu (this is really just an achievements-button, and a main menu one)) go on the left. Currently, it looks crammed together, and the highscore just looks malplaced.

sorry to hear that. can i ask which device you used? i have to admit i didn't test it for every resolution available. the screen split and menu button is a good idea. i will add them.

Did you implement parts of the UI yourself? The achievements-screen jumps back instantly when I release my finger after scrolling "too far"- the LibGDX scrollpane would animate it sliding back, neatly. Why did you not use that?

The options menu is a little weird and disorganized. Most of the rectangle shapes in your UI has cut corners, which is cool. However, the rectangle around the "Options" in the top is square. Why even put a rectangle around it? It's a title, right?

you're absolutely right. that's an old background i used for another game. i will look into it!

Willing to share your custom leaderboard system? Not the code but ideas and concept. Ie. how do you send data from device to server, in what format, crypted somehow I quess?

I'm working on with my first game with LibGDX too and I want a simple leaderboard system for it. A system that not require users to sign in to submit their scores. So Google's system is out of the question. Swarm Connect would be ok but I would like to show scores in game screen, not in seperated page.

If there are any other leaderboard API that would suit my needs I would be grateful!

at the moment i save everything. but i'm planning to change to a system where every user gets identified by his unique id and updates the score accordenly. but this needs some extra work to allow for name change etc.

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